School Year Interference of Solar Year Resolved

[Warning: The following Blog Post  is rated EG and may be offensive to some Educators who are starting school today or tomorrow. Educator Discretion is Advised!]

For eight long years, I worked for the local city school system. In that time my body became steadily more conscious of a different set of seasons and routines. The school year warped my appreciation of the seasons and the solar year.
I longed for June and dreaded August; hoped for December and April’s breaks and tried not to think about early spring and the awful “Long Haul” between New Year's and Easter when there was nothing but school days without interruption as far as the eye could see.
When June finally arrived (and for some, May) the ‘Countdown’ would begin. Teachers are giddy and exhausted, the children are no longer able to contain themselves, the warm temperatures and buzzing bees and pretty flowers all call everyone in the school building to leave behind our books, SmartBoards and calculators, and go home.
Summers for me, then, although a distinct relief, were also full of part-time-job-hunting and penny-pinching. Since I was only a ten month employee, I didn’t get paid during summer break, so other work was not only a good idea, it was necessary.
Invariably, vacation and visits from family, along with weekend celebrations make the entire summer break flash by like no other part of the year. And soon it’s time for teachers and staff to “Go Back” with only a week before the students- universally and ominously known by school staff as ‘Them’ or ‘They’- return.
For me, a lover of the season of Autumn, school starting always filled me with a desire for chilly, leaf changing days. I always imagined myself going back to school in my sport coat with leather elbow patches and scarf, cheeks rosy and leaves falling. Since school starts in late August, however, it’s still unpleasantly hot outside and it feels for all the world like you’ve been gypped out of the rest of your summer.
Finally, last year, I had enough. I could no longer hold myself up against the storm of that job, its stress and it’s low pay.
When summer arrived and I was free, I knew in my heart of hearts that I wouldn’t ‘Go Back’ in August. Instead of working for the summer, I created a rigorous daily schedule, so that I could get some big jobs accomplished at home and look for a new job. In mid-July, I found one and I went back to work.
Educator colleagues might complain that I had a truncated summer vacation. It’s true, but I was so happy to not have to ‘Go Back’ in August, that I never thought twice about it.
Busy learning the ins and outs of my new job, I didn’t pay much attention to the start of the new school year outside of our own boys' experiences and I really only noticed that school was out when more children began to show up at work during typical school hours.
A full year later, I’ve noticed something else very interesting about my perceptions of the seasons and the year now that I’m no longer looking at it from the perspective of an educator. I actually enjoy the seasons more fully as they proceed without the distortion of the school year. Certainly, I now work all week every week all year long, but that allows for such a great appreciation of the natural clockwork of a solar year that I don't mind at all. The breaks and holidays and choppy feel of a school year as it sits within the solar year actually undermines the ability to appreciate the seasons as they progress naturally.

I now notice the subtle changes, beginning in mid-summer that will eventually blend into Autumn. The first blooms of Spring as they strain up and out of the cold, wet mud and the last leaves of Autumn that meander down; the first snowflakes and the last coldsnap, the heat waves and the thunderstorms are no longer lost on me.
While my educator friends moped around for the last week before school began, trying desperately not to think about all the time they wasted in June and July, I happily strolled back and forth to work, enjoying the weather and breathing deeply the long, slow descent into Autumn, never once wistfully longing for Thanksgiving or Christmas to 'hurry up and get here'.
While they impatiently think towards the holidays, I’m still looking forward to a long weekend at Labour Day, while enjoying cooler mornings and evenings and glorious greenness of late summer; something that until this year, I hadn’t noticed since before I worked in education.
In six weeks while they scramble to get report cards done, I’ll be thinking about our 11th Anniversary and Fall Festival. In twelve weeks, with only a week until Thanksgiving, I’ll be thinking about how wonderful a sweater feels and how pretty the evening sky is. It’s a freedom I cannot explain.
It is true that I don’t get as much time off at Christmas or Easter as I used to, but I now get enough vacation time to take a week off when I can actually enjoy it with the whole family and still get paid for it.
I hope that my former colleagues won’t resent me. I know now, after a year away, that I couldn’t ever go back to that lifestyle. Perhaps someday the Education System will think of a way to lessen the effects of solar year distortion by the school year. I hope so, for my former colleagues’ sake. I really do hope so.